Seg 3 - WBB Show w Geno Auriemma Dec 20

Bob & Geno on the countless number of plays written up in his office....the less, the better. And if you have a successful #4, you're good

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Back with Gino as we get sent for Yukon and
USC and we're doing this today in person in his office.
And you know, I remember the show that HBO did,
and I think it was some of the early segments,
like the intros where you're sitting at your desk drawing
up plays. Well, I'm looking at Geno's off desk here
and he's got papers full of half court diagrams with

(00:21):
certain plays movements that players have. I'm sure you probably
have somewhere hundreds of these somewhere stashed the way, in
all the forty years that you've done this here at Yukon.

Speaker 2 (00:32):
Yeah, yeah, they certainly pile up. Some are just concepts,
you know, some are just ideas, and some are actual,
you know, plays that you want, you know, you want
to incorporate at some point some years. The more plays

(00:55):
you have, the worse your team is. You know. I'll
give you a quick for instance. I remember when we
went to the Final four with Megan's team back in
nineteen ninety one. I think we had like four or
five things that we did. That's it. We never did
anything else. Stewey's teams, generally speaking, we did four or
five things, nothing else. You know. So if you can

(01:18):
find four or five things that you can execute really really,
really well, that's really all you need. But a lot
of times, if you've got fifteen things, twenty things, it's
because you're searching. And whenever you're searching, that's not a
good thing. But there's a couple favorites that we've had
over there's still some things that we do that we
did twenty five years ago, and people might say, oh,

(01:40):
that's not modern day basketball. Well, modern day basketball is
put the ball in the basket. That's why it's called basketball,
basket ball. Put the ball in the basket. So whether
it's you know, nineteen ninety four, or whether it's two
thousand and four or it's twenty twenty four, right, there's
there's a lot of ways to get the ball in
the basket, and some of them haven't gone away. And

(02:02):
I enjoy coming up with new ideas, but I also
enjoy bringing back the old stuff because people are forgotten
about it and all these young coaches didn't even know
it existed, you know, so it's kind of fun fun
to tinker with that stuff. Do you do it?

Speaker 1 (02:19):
I mean, obviously you probably do all this stuff based
on what your personnel is too. I would think.

Speaker 2 (02:24):
Yeah, And for instance, my ideas generally don't work very
well unless we have a four man that can really, really,
really play. I think that's why some of the stuff
that we do now our offense can look so good
is because you know somebody like Sarah. To me, the

(02:45):
big thing is your guards are going to have the
ball a lot, right, But here's where the defense goes
to die when you throw your ball. When you throw
the ball to one of your big guys, and if
all they can do is shoot it, then you're gonna
have a bad team. But if they can handle the

(03:06):
ball like a guard, you know, you can use them
as an inbounder. You put him in the middle of
you know, against the press, you you can put him
in the middle and run four people around them. You
can create spacing for your if you have you can
post anybody you want up because that guy's dragging the
other team's big guy out of the lane. So I

(03:28):
think even those years when you don't have a great guard,
if you have a great foreman. Let's go back to
nineteen eighty five, eighty six, eighty seven, eighty eight, right,
Megan Patterson, Rebecca Lobo to Carol Walters, you know, megan
to carry mayoed Tina Tuck to Stewie Stewie to Stephanie Dolson.

(04:00):
You know, you just keep going down the line and
you start to realize that when you do have somebody
like that, you've got somebody special and the other Sometimes
the other people don't realize it because the other guy
gets more attention. But it's actually that guy that makes
everything work. And I remember one time when somebody said

(04:26):
your team is unbeatable, and I said, well, I would
think so. I said, we have the best guard in
America renamed Montgomery. We have the best center in the
country in Tina Charles, and oh yeah, we have the
best player in the country in my war. So when
you can fill three spots, then you have a super

(04:48):
natural team two, you have a chance to win almost
a lot. The whole thing. You had a third guy
in there, man, and you become almost invincible.

Speaker 1 (04:59):
Yeah, reason why they won seventy eight in a row
back to back underfeet a national championship. Speaking of Maya
and Sue, you're potentially going to have two of your
all time top five players in the Hall of Fame
this fall. That's a good problem to have.

Speaker 2 (05:16):
Yeah. Yeah, when I found out at first, I was like,
wait a minute, Sue can't get in. She hasn't been
down five years. And you know, I was I was
told that they changed the criteria. It was really like
a moment for me of wow that you know, when

(05:45):
they were seventeen and they decided to come to Yukon.
Who could ever predict this, Who could ever imagine this,
you know, who could say, yeah, yeah, yeah, this is
this is automatic. It's actually it's funny. It's actually a

(06:08):
better feeling than when I got a phone call saying
I was in, because it's like it's like when you're
a parent and something great happens to you, doesn't quite
feel as good as when something great happens to your kids.
You know, like when your kids are born, Yeah that's
a big deal, but when your kids have kids, that's

(06:28):
a huge deal. You know. So that's kind of how
I felt today.

Speaker 1 (06:32):
All right, final segment with Gino. Oh yeah, there's a
big game tomorrow night. We'll preview that and we'll go
through the injuries. Because it's still a problem with the Huskies.
As you're listening to you kind of women's basketball coaches
show on Learfield to stay with us.